Raeburn

MASTERPIECES

IN COLOUR

MASTERPIECES
IN COLOUR

EDITED BY - -
T. LEMAN HARE

RAEBURN

17561823

IN THE SAME SERIES

ARTIST.
VELAZQUEZ.
REYNOLDS.
TURNER.
ROMNEY.
GREUZE.
BOTTICELLI.
ROSSETTI.
BELLINI.
FRA ANGELICO.
REMBRANDT.
LEIGHTON.
RAPHAEL.
HOLMAN HUNT.
TITIAN
MILLAIS.
CARLO DOLCI.
GAINSBOROUGH.
TINTORETTO.
LUINI.

FRANZ HALS.
VAN DYCK.
LEONARDO DA VINCI.
RUBENS.
WHISTLER.
HOLBEIN.
BURNE-JONES.
VIGEE LE BRUN.
CHARDIN.
FRAGONARD.
MEMLINC.
CONSTABLE.
RAEBURN.
JOHN S. SARGENT

AUTHOR.
S. L. BENSUSAN.
S. L. BENSUSAN.
C. LEWIS HIND.
C. LEWIS HIND.
ALYS EYRE MACICLIN.
HENRY B. BINNS.

LUCIRN PlSSARRO.

GEORGE HAY.

JAMBS MASON.

JOSEF ISRAELS.

A. Lvs BAI.DRY.

PAUL G. KONODY.

MARY E. COLERIDGE.

S. L. BENSUSAN.

A. LYS BALDRY.

GEORGE HAY.

MAX ROTHSCHILD.

S. L. BENSUSAN.
JAMES MASON.

EDGCUMBE STALEY.

PERCY M. TURNER.

M. W. B ROCKWELL.

S. L. BENSUSAN.

T. MARTIN WOOD.

S. L. BENSUSAN.

A. LYS BALDRY.

C. HALDANE MACFALL.

PAUL G. KONODY.

C. HAI.DANE MACFALL.

W. H. J. & J. C. WEALE.

C. LEWIS HIND.

JAMES L. CAW.

T. MARTIN WOOD.

Others in Preparation.

PLATE I. LORD NEWTON (Frontispiece).
(National Gallery of Scotland.)

This chef-d'oeuvre, which dates from about 1807, represents one of
the most celebrated characters who ever sat upon the bench of the
Court of Session. Famous in his day for "law, paunch, whist,
claret, and worth," the exploits of Charles Hay, "The Mighty," as
he was called, have become traditions of the Parliament House.
(See p. 79.)

BY JAMES L. CAW 9 9 9
ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR

LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.

097426

CONTENTS

Pago

Chapter I. 17

II. . 27

HI. - 36

IV. . . - 44

V. . 5i

VI. ... 58

vii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Plate

I. Lord Newton .... Frontispiece
(National Gallery of Scotland)

II. Children of Mr and the Hon. Mrs Paterson

of Castle Huntly 14

(In the possession of Cbas. J. G. Paterson, Esq.)

III. Mrs Lauzun .24

(National Gallery, London)

IV. Mrs Campbell of Balliemore ... 34

(National Gallery of Scotland)

V. Professor Robison 40

(University of Edinburgh)

VI. John Tait of Harvieston and his Grandson 50

(In the possession of Mrs Pitman)

VII. Miss de Vismes 60

(In the possession of the Earl of Mansfield)

VIII. Mrs Scott Moncrieff . . . . 70

(National Gallery of Scotland)

WHEN in 1810, Henry Raeburn, then at
the height of his powers, proposed to
settle in London, Lawrence dissuaded
him. It is unnecessary, as it would be unjust,
to insinuate that the future President of the
Royal Academy had ulterior and personal
motives in urging him to rest content with his

12 RAEBURN

supremacy in the North. Raeburn was fifty-five
at the time, and, after his undisputed reign at
home, even his generous nature might have
taken ill with the competition inseparable from
such a venture. Lawrence's advice was wise in
many ways, and Raeburn, secure in the admira-
tion and constant patronage of his countrymen,
lived his life to the end unvexed by the petty
jealousy of inferior rivals. Nor was recognition
confined to Scotland. Ultimately he was elected
a member of the Royal Academy, an honour all
the more valued because unsolicited. Yet, had
the courtly Lawrence but known, acceptance of
his advice kept a greater than himself from
London, and, it may be, prevented the perpetua-
tion and further development of that tradition
of noble portraiture of which Raeburn, with
personal modifications, was such a master. For
long also it confined the Scottish painter's
reputation to his own country. Forty years
after his death, his art was so little known in
England that the Re_dgraves, in their admirable
history of English painting, relegated him to
a chapter headed "The Contemporaries of
Lawrence." Time brings its revenges, however,

PLATE II.-CHILDREN OF MR AND THE HON. MRS
PATERSON OF CASTLE HUNTLY. (Charles J. G.
Pater son, Esq.)

Painted within a year or two of Raeburn's return from Italy,
some critics have seen, or thought they saw, in this picture the
influence of Michael Angelo. Be this as it may, the handling,
lighting, and tone and disposition of the colour are eminently
characteristic of much of the work done by Raeburn about 1790.

RAEBURN 15

and of late years Raeburn has taken a place in
the very front rank of British painters. And, if
this recognition has been given tardily by
English critics, the reason is to be found in want
of acquaintance with his work. He had lived
and painted solely in Scotland, and Scottish art,
like foreign art, so long as it remains at home,
has little interest for London, which, sure of its
attractive power, sits arrogantly still till art is
brought to it. But Raeburn's work possesses
that inherent power, which, seen by com-
prehending eyes, compels admiration. The
Raeburn exhibition held in Edinburgh in 1876
was quite local in its influence, but from time to
time since then, at "The Old Masters" and
elsewhere, admirable examples have been shown
in London; and recent loan collections in
Glasgow and Edinburgh, wherein his achieve-
ment was very fully illustrated, were seen by
large and cosmopolitan audiences. And the
better his work has become known, the more
has it been appreciated. Collectors and galleries
at home and abroad are now anxious to secure
examples; dealers are as alert to buy as they
are keen to sell ; prices have risen steadily from

i6 RAEBURN

the very modest sums of twenty years ago
until fine pictures by him fetch as much as
representative specimens of Reynolds and Gains-
borough. Fashion has had much to do with this
greatly enhanced reputation, but another, and
more commendable cause of the appreciation,
not of the commercial value but of the artistic
merit of his work, lies in the fact that the
qualities which dominate it are those now held
in highest esteem by artists and lovers of art.
Isolated though he was, Raeburn expressed
himself in a manner and achieved pictorial
results which make his achievement somewhat
similar in kind to that of Velasquez and Hals.

IF, during the last century, Scotland has
shown exceptional activity in the arts,
especially in painting, and has produced a
succession of artists whose work is marked by
able craftsmanship and emotional and subjective
qualities, which give it a distinctive place in
modern painting, the more than two hundred
years which lay between the Reformation and
the advent of Raeburn seemed to hold little
promise of artistic development. During the
Middle Ages and the renaissance the internal
condition of the country was too unsettled and
its resources were too meagre to make art
widely possible. Strong castles and beautiful
churches were built here and there, but inter-
mittent war on the borders and fear of invasion
kept even the more settled central districts in a
state of unrest. Moreover, the fierce barons

17 B

i8 RAEBURN

were at constant feud amongst themselves, and
not infrequently the more powerful amongst
them were banded against the King. Of the
first five Jameses only the last died, and that
miserably, in his bed. The innate taste of the
Stewarts, no doubt, created an atmosphere of
culture in the Court, and this tendency was
further strengthened by commercial relations
with the Low Countries and political associations
with France. Poetry and scholarship were
encouraged, if poorly rewarded one remembers
Dunbar's unavailing poetical pleas for a benefice
and relics and old records show that even in
those stirring times life was not without its
refinements and tasteful accessories. Yet only
in the Church or for her service was there the
quietude necessary for art work of the higher
kinds. Then came the Reformation (during
which much fine ecclesiastical furniture and
decoration perished) severing the connection of
art with religion and sowing distrust of art in
any form.

Had the Union of the Crowns not taken place
in 1603, it is possible that the art of painting
might have developed much earlier than it did.

RAEBURN 19

No doubt that event brought healing to the
long open sore caused and inflamed by kingly
ambitions and national animosities, but it re-
moved the Court to London, and with that some
of the greatest nobles, while the change in the
religion of the ruling house from Presbyterianism
to Episcopacy, which followed, led to the
Covenants and the religious persecution, and
drove the iron of ascetism into the souls of those
classes from whom artists mostly spring. Yet
the logical rigidity of the Calvinistic spirit,
while taking much of the joy out of life and
opposing its manifestation in art, had certain com-
pensating advantages. Disciplining the mind,
quickening the reasoning powers, and cultivating
that grasp of essentials which makes for success
in almost any pursuit, and not least in art, it
helped very largely to make the Scot what
he is.

During the peaceful years which immediately
followed the Union, there was considerable
activity in the building of country residences.
Now that the country was more settled these
were less castles than mansions, and the larger
and better lighted apartments possible led to a

20 RAEBURN

good deal of elaborate decoration. Of this Pinkie
House (1613) with its painted gallery is perhaps
the most celebrated example. It is difficult,
however, to determine how much of this kind of
work was done by foreign, how much by native
craftsmen, and as it seems to have exerted little
influence upon the one or two picture-painters
who emerged during the seventeenth century, one
need not discuss the probabilities. So far as
has been discovered, the only link between
this phase of art and the other consists of
the fact that George Jamesone (i598?-i644),
the first clearly recognisable Scottish artist,
was apprenticed in 1612 to one John Andersone
"paynter" in Edinburgh, whose decoration in
Gordon Castle is mentioned by an old chronicler.
As might be expected in the circumstances the
"Scottish Van Dyck," as he is fondly called,
was a portrait-painter. He was followed by a
few others, such as the Scougall family, Aikman
Marshall, Wait, and the two Alexanders, who,
although neither so accomplished nor so much
appreciated as their precursor, form a never quite
broken succession of portraitists between him
and Allan Ramsay (1713-84) in whose work art

RAEBURN 21

in Scotland took a great step forward. 1 A few
of Ramsay's predecessors had succeeded in
supplementing the meagre instruction if any
thing that existed could be dignified by that
name to be obtained in Scotland by a visit to
the Low Countries or Italy, but Ramsay was
the first to obtain a sound technical training.
The author of " The Gentle Shepherd," to whom
Edinburgh was indebted for its first circulating
library and its first play-house, encouraged his
son's bent for art, and after some preliminary
study in London, Allan fils was sent to " The
seat of the Beast" beyond the Alps, where he
became a pupil of Solimena and Imperiale and
of the French Academy. Formed under these
influences, his style possesses no clearly marked
national trait, except it be the feeling for
character which informs his finer work and
makes it, in a way, a link between that of
Jamesone and that of Raeburn. To this he
added a delicate sense of tone and a tender-
ness of colour and lighting, a gracefulness of
drawing and a refined accomplishment which

1 J. Michael Wright (i62S?-i7oo?), at his best probably the finest native
painter of the seventeenth century, went to England.

22 RAEBURN

were new in Scottish painting. His turn for
charm of pose and grace of motive was pro-
nounced, and his protraitures mirror very
happily the mannered yet elegant social airs of
the mid-eighteenth century. More than that of
any English painter of his day, his art possesses
" French elegance."

Ramsay's activity as a painter coincided with
a remarkable intellectual movement which,
making itself felt in history, philosophy, science,
and political economy, raised Scotland within a
few years to a conspicuous intellectual place
in Europe. A product of the reaction which
followed the narrow and intense theological ideals
which had dominated Scotland, it was closely
associated with the reign of the Moderates,
who, with their breadth of view, tolerance, and
intellectual gifts had become the most influential
party in the National Church. Offering an outlet
for the human instincts and secular activities,
it possessed special attraction for independent
minds and induced boldness of speculation and
original investigation of the phenomena of history
and society. Intimate with the leaders in this
movement, Ramsay, before he left Edinburgh

PLATE III. MRS LAUZUN. (National Gallery.)

Only one of the three Raeburns in the National Gallery is an
adequate example. This is the picture reproduced. It was painted
in 1795, and, while very typical technically, possesses greater charm
than most of the portraits of women executed by him at that com-
paratively early date.

RAEBURN 25

for London, was active in the formation (1754)
of the "Select Society," which in addition to
its main object the improvement of its members
in reasoning and eloquence sought to encourage
the arts and sciences and to improve the
material and social condition of the people. It
was in this more genial atmosphere that Henry
Raeburn was reared.

Born in 1756, Raeburn was not too late to
paint many of the most gifted of the older
generation. David Hume, who sat to Ramsay
more than once, was dead before the new light
rose above the horizon, and the appearance of
Adam Smith does not seem to be recorded
except in a Tassie medallion; but Black, the
father of modern chemistry, and Hutton, the
originator of modern geology, were amongst
his early sitters ; and fine works in a more
mature manner have Principal Robertson,
James Watt, the engineer, Adam Ferguson,
the historian, Dugald Stewart, the philosopher,
and others scarcely less interesting for subject.
And of his own immediate contemporaries the
cycle of Walter Scott he has left an almost
complete gallery. Nor were his sitters less

26 RAEBURN

fortunate. If they brought fine heads to be
painted, he painted them with wonderful insight,
real grasp of character, and greal pictorial
power.

II.

DESCENDED from a race of "bonnet-
lairds," who took their name from a hill
farm in the Border district, Robert
Raeburn, the artist's father, seems to have
come to Edinburgh as a young man in the
earlier part of the eighteenth century. At
that time the city had expanded but little
beyond the limits marked by the Flodden
wall. The high grey lands along the windy
ridge between the Castle and Holyrood were
still tenanted by the upper classes, and such
extension as had been was towards the
Meadows. The new town had not been pro-
jected even, and on the slopes, now occupied
by its spacious streets and squares, copse-
woods and grass and heather grew. In the
hollow at the foot of these green braes, and
by the side of the Water of Leith, a chain of
little hamlets Dean, Stockbridge, and Canon-
mills nestled, and in the mid-most of these

27

28 RAEBURN

Robert Raeburn established himself as a yarn-
boiler. Although in the country, his home was
less than a mile from St Giles's Kirk. His
business appears to have prospered, and during
the early forties he married Miss Ann Elder.
There was a difference of twelve years in the
ages of their two sons, William and Henry,
and the younger was no more than six when
both father and mother died. Left to the care
of his brother, who carried on the business,
Henry Raeburn was nominated for maintenance
and education at Heriot's Hospital by Mrs
Sarah Sandilands or Durham in 1764, and
remained seven years in the school, which
owed its origin to the bequest of George
Heriot, jeweller to James VI. and I. in Edin-
burgh and later in London. Many boys had
been educated on "Jingling GeordieV founda-
tion, but Raeburn was to be its most distin-
guished product. He does not seem to have
distinguished himself specially as a scholar,
however, the two prizes awarded to him having
been for writing, and at the age of fifteen or
sixteen he was apprenticed to a jeweller and
goldsmith in Parliament Close. This choice of

RAEBURN 29

a calling was probably suggested by the lad's
own inclinations, but it was a stroke of good
fortune* that gave him James Gilliland as a
master. No craft then practised in the Scottish
capital was so likely to have been congenial
to him. In the eighteenth century a silver-
smith made as well as sold plate and ornaments,
and in his master's shop Raeburn must have
learned to use his hands and may have acquired
some idea of design. In addition Gilliland
seems to have been a man of some taste
one of his most intimate friends, David
Deuchar, the seal-engraver, devoted his leisure
to etching, and executed many plates after
Holbein and the Dutch masters. It was to
the latter that Raeburn owed his first lessons
in art. Surprising his friend's apprentice at
work on a drawing of himself, Deuchar, struck
by the talent displayed, inquired if he had had
any instruction. No, he had not, wished he
had, but could not afford it, the youth replied;
and Deuchar's offer to give him a lesson once
or twice a week was accepted eagerly. The
story is pleasant and circumstantial enough
to be credible; and the existence of an early

30 RAEBURN

Raeburn miniature of Deuchar is evidence of
the existence of friendship between the two.
But, as a free drawing-school had been founded
in 1760 by the Honourable the Board of Manu-
factures for the precise object of encouraging
and improving design for manufactures, the
impossibility of Raeburn receiving instructions of
some kind was less than seems to be implied.

It is true, of course, that the teaching then
given was exceedingly elementary, and that
it was not until after the appointment in
1798 of John Graham 1 (1754-1817) as preceptor
that the Trustees' Academy was developed and
began to exercise a definite and indeed a
profound influence on Scottish painting. From
1771, the year in which Raeburn left Heriot's,
until his death, Alexander Runciman (1736-85),
the "Sir Brimstone" of a convivial club of the
day and an artist of great ambition and some
gifts, if little real accomplishment, in history
painting, was master, however, and tradition
has it that Raeburn took the tone of his
colour from that painter's work. But no
record exists of Raeburn having been a pupil

1 Sir David Wilkie, Sir William Allan, and others were pupils of Graham.

RAEBURN 31

of the school, and he does not appear to have
received any more training than was involved
in the relationships with his master and his
master's friend which have been described.
Even subsequent introduction to David Martin
(1737-98), who settled in Edinburgh in 1775,
when Raeburn was nineteen, meant little
more. By that time, or little later, he had
almost certainly come to an arrangement
under which his master cancelled his indenture,
and received as compensation a share in the
prices received for the miniatures to which
Raeburn now chiefly devoted himself, and for
which Gilliland probably helped to secure
commissions. These miniatures, of which few
have survived, recognisable as his work at
least, possess no very marked artistic qualities.
Drawn with care and not without considerable
sense of construction, they are tenderly
modelled but not stippled, and the colour is
cool and rather negative in character. The
frank way in which the sitters are regarded,
and the lighting and placing of the heads are
almost the only elements which hint their
authorship. They are simple and straight-

32 RAEBURN

forward likenesses rather than works of art
and bear no obvious relationship to the elegant
bibelots or deeply-searched portraits in little
of the contemporary English school of minia-
turists. But obviously they were some pre-
paration for the development which followed,
when, soon afterwards and almost at once,
he passed from water-colour miniature to life-
size portraiture in oil paint.

The rapid expansion of Edinburgh pro-
vided new opportunities and helped to
Raeburn's early success. When he was eight
years old the building of the North Bridge,
which was to connect the old city with the
projected new town on the other side of the
valley, was begun, and by the time he attained
his majority many of the well-to-do had
migrated. The new district meant bigger
houses and larger rooms, and, with the increase
in wealth which followed the commercial and
agricultural development of the country of
which the city was the capital, led to alterations
in the habits and expansion of the ideals of
its inhabitants. It was probably the opening
for an artist offered by these altered circum-

PLATE IV. MRS CAMPBELL OF BALLIEMORE.
(National Gallery of Scotland.

This is one of the huest of the many fine portraits by Raeburn
in the Edinburgh Gallery. Its place in the artist's work is discussed
on page 63.

RAEBURN 35

stances which had brought Martin to Edinburgh,
and certainly Raeburn was fortunate in that
his emergence coincided with them. An
attractive and clever lad devoting himself to
art in a community increasing in wealth and
expanding in ideas, and with a sympathetic
master coming in contact with the upper
classes, Raeburn could not fail to make
acquaintances able and willing to help him.
Amongst these was John Clerk, younger of
Eldin, later a famous advocate, through whom
the young artist got into touch with the
Penicuik family which for several generations
had been notable for its interest in the arts.
And this would lead to other introductions.

III.

THE influences which affected Raeburn and
the models upon which he formed either
his style or his method are difficult to
trace. Allan Ramsay, having painted many
portraits in Edinburgh before he went to London
in the same year as Raeburn was born, would be,
one would think, the most likely source of inspira-
tion. Except Runciman, who occasionally varied
historical subjects by portraits painted in a
broad but somewhat empty manner, and Seaton,
an artist of whom little is known but whose rare
and seldom seen portraits possess a breadth of
handling and a simplicity of design which give
the best of them a certain distinction can they
have been an influence with Raeburn? the
Scottish portrait-painters of the eighteenth
century were much influenced by Ramsay, and
Martin had been his favourite pupil. Raeburn's
connection with the latter was very slight,
however. Beyond giving the youth the entre6 to

36

RAEBURN 37

his studio and lending him a few pictures to copy,
Martin does not seem to have been of much
direct assistance, and even these little courtesies
come to an end when the painter to the Prince of
Wales for Scotland unjustly accused the jewel-
ler's apprentice of having sold one of the copies
he had been allowed to make. Rumour, often
astray but now and then hitting the mark, said
that the real reason was jealousy of the younger
man's growing powers. Raeburn's debt to
Ramsay and Martin was therefore inconsiderable
and indirect. It is not traceable in the technique
or arrangement of his earliest known pictures,
such as the full-length "George Chalmers"
in Dunfermline Town Hall, which was painted
in 1776, when the artist was twenty. Probably
sight of Martin's pictures in progress was an
incentive to work rather than a formative
influence on his development as a painter. He
had, says Allan Cunningham, writing within a
few years of Raeburn's death, "to make experi-
ments, and drudge to acquire what belongs to
the mechanical labour, and not to the genius of
his art His first difficulty was the preparation
of his colours ; putting them on the palette, and

38 RAEBURN

applying them according to the rules of art
taught in the academies. All this he had to seek
out for himself." And, if probably exaggerated,
the statement gives some idea of the difficulties
with which he had to contend. There were at
that time no exhibitions and no public collections
of pictures where a youth of genuine instinct
could have gleaned hints as to technical pro-
cedure, but there were at least portraits in a
number of houses in the city and district, and
from these and from prints after the Masters, of
which Deuchar, an etcher himself, evidently
possessed examples, Raeburn no doubt derived
much instruction as to design, the use of
chiaroscuro and the like. It has also been
suggested with considerable likelihood that
mezzotints after portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds
had a considerable effect upon him.

Passing from supposition, which, however
interesting and plausible, throws no very definite
light upon the formation of Raeburn's style, to
his early work itself, one finds it chiefly re-
markable for frank rendering of character.
Obviously he believed in his own eyes, and
sought simple and direct ways for the expression

PLATE V.-PROFESSOR ROBISON.

(University of Edinburgh.)

Painted about 1798, "Professor Robison" is one of the most
notable portraits painted by Raeburn before 1800. It represents
the culmination of his premier coup manner. (See pp. 63 and 73. )

RAEBURN 41

of his vision. Certain of what he saw, and
desiring to set it down as he saw it, lack of
training in the traditional methods of painting
by process probably led him to attempt direct
realisation in paint. Here is at once the simplest
and the most reasonable explanation of how he
became an exponent of direct painting, of how,
isolated though it was, his art came to be perhaps
the most emphatic statement of this particular
method of handling between Velasquez and Hals
and comparatively recent times. Of course at
this early stage his technical accomplishment
was not at all equal to his frankness of vision.
His drawing, although expressing character, was
uncertain and not fully constructive ; his sense of
design was rather stiff and occasionally some-
what archaic in character; his handling and
modelling, if broad and courageous, were insuffi-
ciently supported by knowledge; his colour was
apt to be dull and monotonous, or, when breaking
from that, patchy and crude in its more definite
notes which do not fuse sufficiently with their
surroundings.

Gradually these deficiencies were mastered,
but in some degree they persist in most of the

42 RAEBURN

comparatively few portraits which can be said
with certainty to have been painted before he
went to Italy. He had been in no hurry to go.
Ever since marriage with one of his sitters in
1778, when he was only twenty-two, his future
had been secure. The lady, ne6 Ann Edgar of
Bridgelands, Peebleshire, brought him a consider-
able fortune. The widow of James Leslie who
traced his descent to Sir George Leslie, first Baron
of Balquhain (1351), and who, after his purchase
of Deanhaugh in I777, 1 was spoken of as " Count
of Deanhaugh " she was twelve years the artist's
senior, and had three children ; but the marriage
turned out most happily for all concerned.
Raeburn went to live at his wife's property,
which lay not far from his brother's house and
factory at Stockbridge, and, although sitters
increased with his growing reputation until he
is said to have been quite independent of his
wife's income, he does not appear to have had a
separate studio. Probably his Edinburgh clients

1 If, as stated by Cumberland Hill in his History of Stockbridge, Leslie
bought Deanhaugh in 1777, and if, as stated by Cunningham and others,
Raeburn married in 1778, the lady can have been a widow for only a few
months.

V

RAEBURN 43

went to Deanhaugh, and at times he seems to
have painted portraits at the country houses
of the gentry. But in 1785 desire to see and
learn more than was possible at home took him
to Italy. While in London he made the
acquaintance of Reynolds, in whose studio he
may have worked for a few weeks, and Sir
Joshua's advice confirming his original intention,
Raeburn and his wife went to Rome, where
they resided about two years. When parting
Reynolds took him aside and whispered : " Young
man, I know nothing about your circumstances.
Young painters are seldom rich; but if money
be necessary for your studies abroad, say so, and
you shall not want it." Money was not needed,
but letters of introduction were accepted gladly ;
and "ever afterwards Raeburn mentioned the
name of Sir Joshua with much respect."

IV.

IN these days of rapid travel, the transition
from north to south is exceedingly striking.
Leaving London one speeds past the
pleasant Surrey fields and lanes and woodlands,
and through the soft rolling green downs, and in
the afternoon and evening sees the less familiar
but not strange wide planes and poplar-fringed
rivers of Northern France, to open one's eyes
next morning upon the brown sun-baked lands,
with their strange southern growths, which lie
behind Marseilles; and all day as the train
thunders along the Riviera, through olive gardens
and vineyards, one has glimpses of strangely
picturesque white-walled and many-coloured
shuttered towns fringing the broad bays or
clustering on the rocks above little harbours,
and drinks a strange enchantment from great
vistas of lovely coast washed by blue waters
and gladdened by radiant sunshine. And on
the second morning, issuing into the great square

44

RAEBURN 45

before the station, you have your first sight of
Rome.

Yet impressive as these transitions are, they
are nothing to the contrast which Rome pre-
sented to the stranger from the north in the
eighteenth century when, after slow and long and
weary travelling, he reached his goal. Then
Rome was still a town of the renaissance imposed
upon a city of the ancients ; and under the aegis
of the Papacy preserved aspects of life and
character which differed little from those of
three or four centuries earlier. After the grey
metropolis of the north, with its softly luminous
or cloudy skies, its sombreness of aspect, its
calvinistic religious atmosphere, its interest in
science and philosophy, and its want of interest
in the arts, the clear sunshiny air of the
Eternal City, its picturesque and crowded life,
its gorgeous ecclesiastical ceremonies and pro-
cessions, its monuments of art and achitecture,
and its cosmopolitan coteries of eager dilettanti
discussing the latest archaeological discoveries,
and of artists studying the achievements of the
past, must have formed an extraordinary contrast
Yet Raeburn, much as these novel and stirring

46 RAEBURN

surroundings would strike him, remained true
to his own impressions of reality and was un-
affected in his artistic ideals. Almost alone of
the foreign artists then resident in Rome, he
was unaffected by the pseudo-classicism which
prevailed. In part a product of emasculated
academic tradition, and in part the result of
philosophical speculations, upon which the
discoveries at Pompeii and the excavations
then taking place in Rome had had a strong
influence, it was an attitude which founded itself
upon the past and opposed the direct study of
nature. Gavin Hamilton (1723-98) and Jacob
More (1740 ?-93) two of its most conspicuous
pictorial exponents were Scots by birth, but
they had lived so long abroad that Scotland
had become to them little more than a memory.
The work of the former was in many ways an
embodiment of the current dilettante conception
of art, and kindred in kind, though earlier in
date, to that of Jacques Louis David (1748-1825)
under whose sway, towards the close of the
century, classic ideals came to dominate the
art of Europe outside these isles. His useful-
ness to Raeburn was chiefly that of a cicerone.

RAEBURN 47

There was little of an archaeological kind with
which he was unacquainted, and he was so
famous a discoverer of antiquities that the
superstitious Romans thought that he was in
league with the devil. The landscapes of More,
though highly praised by Goethe, would appeal
to Raeburn little more than did the "sublime"
historical designs of Hamilton. They were but
dilutions, frequently flavoured with melo-
dramatic sentiment, of the noble convention
formulated by Claude and the Poussins.
Raeburn, on the other hand, had looked at
man and nature inquiringly, and had evolved a
manner of expressing the results of his
observation for himself. Moreover he was past
the easily impressionable age, and turned his
opportunities to direct and practical uses. He
used to declare that the advice of James Byres
(1734-1818?) of Tonley, who, in Raeburn's own
words, was " a man of great general information,
a profound antiquary, and one of the best judges
perhaps of everything connected with art in
Great Britain," was the most valuable lesson
he received while abroad. "Never paint any-
thing except you have it before you " was what

48 RAEBURN

his friend urged, and, while Raeburn, to judge
from his early portraits, did not stand greatly
in need of the injunction, it probably strengthened
him in his own beliefs. Be that as it may he
seems to have used his stay in Italy principally
to widen his technical experience, and his work
after his return was richer and fuller than
what he had done previously. No record of
any special study he may have undertaken or
of the pictures he particularly admired exists.
Even gossip is silent as regards his preferences,
except in so far as it is said that while in Rome
he came near to preferring sculpture to painting.

PLATE VI. JOHN TAIT OF HARVIESTON AND
HIS GRANDSON. (Mrs Pitman.)

One of the artist's most virile and trenchant performances, it
was painted in 1798-9. The child was introduced after the grand-
father's death. (Seep. 63.)

\

V.

ARRIVED back in Edinburgh in 1787,
Raeburn took a studio in the new town,
and, with his enhanced powers and the
added prestige due to his sojourn abroad, soon
occupied a commanding place. Few agreed
with Martin that "the lad in George Street
painted better before he went to Italy," for if
the majority were unaware of his high artistic
gifts, none could be unconscious of the vital and
convincing quality of his portraitures. His
earlier sitters included some of the most dis-
tinguished people in Scotland. Lord President
Dundas must have been amongst the very
first for he died before the end of the year.
Ere long his position was unassailable, and
during the five-and-thirty years that followed he
painted practically everybody who was any-
body. Burns is probably the only great Scotsman
of that epoch who was not immortalised by his
brush, for the missing likeness, which has been
discovered so often, was not painted from life
but from Nasmyth's portrait.

From the time he returned home until 1809,

51

52 RAEBURN

when he purchased the adjoining property of
St Bernard's, Raeburn lived at Deanhaugh. 1
The junction of these small estates enabled him
to feu the outlying parts on plans prepared by
himself, architecture being one of his hobbies,
and his family's connection with them is still
marked by such names as Raeburn Place, Ann
Street (after his wife), Leslie Place, St Bernard's
Crescent, and Deanhaugh Street. Some years
earlier continuous increase in the number of
his clients had rendered a change of studio
desirable, and in 1795 he moved from George
Street to 16 (now 32) York Place where he had
built a specially designed and spacious studio,
with a suite of rooms for the display of recently
completed work or of portraits he had painted
for himself. At a later date, when exhibitions
were inaugurated in Edinburgh (first series 1808-
13), he lent the show-rooms to the Society of
Artists which organised them. This action was

1 All Raeburn's biographers follow Cunningham in stating that Raeburn
succeeded to St Bernard's on the death of his brother in 1787 or 1788. It was
not so, however. The intimation in the Edinburgh Evening Courant,
of I3th December 1810, reads, " Died on the 6th December Mr William Raeburn,
manufacturer, Stockbridge" ; and the title deeds of St Bernard's show that
the artist purchased it from the trustees of the late Mrs Margaret Ross in
October 1809

RAEBURN 53

typical of Raeburn's cordial relations with his
fellow-artists, most of whom were poor and
socially unimportant; and only a year before
his death he championed the professional
artists when, partly in opposition to the Royal
Institution, they proposed to form an Academy.
Incidentally also, the letter written on that
occasion, which I have transcribed in full in
Scottish Painting; Past and Present, gives an
indication of the extent of his practice, of how
fully he was engaged.

Until 1808 Raeburn's career had been one
unbroken success, but in that year, following
upon the failure of his son, financial disaster
overtook him. The firm of " Henry Raeburn and
Company, merchants, Shore, Leith," consisted
of Henry Raeburn, Junior, and James Philip
Inglis, who had married Anne Leslie, the artist's
step-daughter, but neither the Edinburgh Gazette
nor the local Directory states the nature of their
business. In the proceedings in connection with
Raeburn's own bankruptcy, however, he is dis-
cribed as "portrait-painter and underwriter."
What underwriter exactly means is uncertain, but
it may be that the son was a marine-insurance

54 RAEBURN

broker, that Raeburn himself took marine-
insurance risks. In any case his ruin seemed
complete. Not only did he lose all his savings
but he had even to sell the York Place studio,
of which he was afterwards only tenant. He
failed, paid a composition, and, two years later,
proposed settling in London. By those of his
biographers who have noticed it at all, this
failure and the contemplated removal south have
been very closely associated. But a more care-
ful examination of the whole circumstances
makes such an assumption rather doubtful.
Alexander Cunningham, in a letter written on
i6th February 1808, tells a correspondent "I
had a walk of three hours on Sunday with my
worthy friend, Raeburn. He had realised nearly
17,000, which is all gone. He has offered a
small composition, which he is in hopes will be
accepted. He quits this to try his fate in
London, which I trust in God will be successful.
While I write this I feel the tear start." So
far the connection is evident enough. But
although the artist received his discharge in
June of the same year, 1 it was not until two
years later that he took active steps towards

1 Henry Raeburn & Co.'s affairs were not settled until March 1810.

RAEBURN 55

carrying out his idea. 1 The time was highly
propitious. Hoppner had just died (23rd January
1810), and Wilkie records in his journal (March
2nd) that he had heard that that artist's house
was to be taken for Raeburn. Lawrence was
now without a rival in the metropolis, and
Raeburn's talent was of a kind which would
soon have commanded attention there. The
opening was obvious, but Raeburn's reception
by the gentlemen of the Royal Academy, when
he visited London in May, was not very cordial,
and fortunately for Scotland, if not for himself, he
was persuaded to remain in Edinburgh. From
then onward the fates were kind. To quote
his own words, written in 1822, "my business,
though it many fall off, cannot admit of en-
largement."

Wider recognition also came to him. He
had exhibited at the Royal Academy as early
as 1792, but it was 1810 before he became a
regular contributor, and in 1812 he was elected
an Associate, full membership following three
years later. Just prior to his advancement to
Academician rank, he wrote one of the few

1 That his own affairs were not only settled but were again highly prosper-
ous before this is apparent from his having purchased St Bernard's in 1809.

56 RAEBURN

letters by him that have been preserved:
" I observe what you say respecting the election
of an R A. ; but what am I to do here ? They
know that I am on their list ; if they choose to
elect me without solicitation, it will be the more
honourable to me, and I will think the more
of it ; but if it can only be obtained by means
of solicitation and canvassing, I must give up
all hopes of it, for I would think it unfair to
employ those means."

No doubt election was particularly gratifying
to Raeburn. Isolated as he was in Edinburgh,
where an Academy did not come into existence
until some years after his death, it must have
been stimulating to receive such tangible
assurance of that appreciation of one's fellow-
workers which is the most grateful form of
admiration to the artist. He reciprocated by
offering as his diploma work the impressive
portrait of himself, which is now one of the
treasures of the National Gallery of Scotland.
The rules of the Academy, however, forbade
the acceptance of a self-portrait, and in 1821 he
gave the " Boy with Rabbit" a portrait of his
step-grandson, but one of his most genre-like

RAEBURN 57

pieces. Other Academic diplomas received later
were those of the Academies of Florence, New
York, and South Carolina.

A year before he died these artistic laurels
were supplemented by royal favour. On the
occasion of that never-to-be-forgotten event-
to those who took part in it the first visit of
a King to Scotland since the Union of Parlia-
ments, Raeburn was presented to George IV.
and knighted. His fellow artists marked their
appreciation of this fresh distinction by enter-
taining him to a public dinner, at which the
chairman, Alexander Nasmyth, the doyen of
the local painters, declared that "they loved
him as a man not less than they admired him
as an artist." And in the following May, the
King appointed him his "limner and painter in
Scotland, with all fees, profits, salaries, rights,
privileges, and advantages thereto belonging."

Raeburn did not long enjoy these new
honours. In July, a day or two after returning
from an archaeological excursion in Fifeshire
with, amongst others, Sir Walter Scott and
Miss Edgeworth, he became suddenly ill, took
to bed, and in less than a week was dead.

VI.

WHILE Raeburn's attitude to reality
was determined and his style was
formed to a great extent before he
went abroad, his ideas of pictorial effect were
broadened and his technical resources enriched
by his sojourn in Italy. Some of the work
executed immediately after his return, such as
the portraits of Lord President Dundas, Neil
Gow, the famous fiddler, and the earlier of two
portraits of his friend John Clerk of Eldin,
shows, with much unity, a greater care and
precision in the handling of detail, a more
searched kind of modelling and a fuller sense
of tone, and thicker impasto and fuller colour
than that done previously. Moreover the design
of the first-named picture is reminiscent in
certain ways of Velasquez's "Pope Innocent X.,"
which he may have seen and studied in the
Doria Palace in Rome, though too much stress
need not be laid on the resemblance. About
this time also, he painted a few pictures in

58

PLATE VII. MISS EMILY DE VISMES LADY
MURRAY. (Earl of Mansfield.)

An admirable example of the artist's mature style, and one of
his most charming portraits of women. (See p. 79.)

RAEBURN 61

which difficult problems of lighting are subtly
and skilfully solved. In things like the charm-
ing bust "William Ferguson of Kilrie" (before
1790) and the group of Sir John and Lady Clerk
of Penicuik (1790) the faces are in luminous
shadow, touched by soft reflected light to give
expression and animation. But for obvious
reasons such effects are not favoured by the
clients of portrait-painters, and that Raeburn
should have adopted them at all is evidence of
the widening of the artistic horizon induced
by his stay abroad.

In pictures painted but little later than these,
one finds a marked tendency to revert to
the more abbreviated modelling and broader
execution which have been noted as character-
istic of his pre-Roman style. The execution,
however, is now much more confident and
masterly, the draughtsmanship better, the de-
sign, while exceedingly simple, less stiff and
more closely knit. Using pigment of very
fluid consistency and never loading the lights,
though following the traditional method of
thick in the lights and thin in the shadows,
his handling is exceedingly direct and spon-

62 RAEBURN

taneous, his touch fearless and broad yet
thoroughly under control, his drawing summary
yet selective and so expressive that, even in
faces where the lighting is so broad that there
is little shadow to mark the features and little
modelling to explain the planes, the large
structure of the head and the essentials of
likeness are rendered in a very satisfying and
convincing way. His colour, however, if losing
the inclination to the rather dull grey-greenness
which had prevailed before 1785, remained
somewhat cold and wanting in quality, and the
more forcible tints introduced in the draperies
were frequently lacking in modulation and were
not quite in harmony with the prevailing tone.
Something of this deficiency in fusion is also
noticeable in his flesh tints, the carnations of
the complexions being somewhat detached
owing to defective gradation where the pinks
join the whites. As experience came, Raeburn
advanced from the somewhat starved quality
of pigment, which in his earlier pictures was
accentuated by his broad manner of handling,
until in many of the pictures painted during
the later nineties he attained extraordinary

RAEBURN 63

power of expression by vigorous and incisive
use of square brush-work and full yet fluid and
unloaded impasto. This method with its sharply
struck touches and simplified planes reaches
its climax perhaps in the striking portrait
(1798 circa) of Professor Robison in white night-
cap and red-striped dressing-gown, though the
more fused manner of "Mrs Campbell of
Balliemore" (1795) and the extraordinary trench-
ant handling of the "John Tait of Harvieston
and his grandson " (1798-9) show modifications
which are as fine and perhaps less mannered.
Even earlier he sometimes attained a solidity
and forcefulness of effect, a fullness of colour,
and a resonance of tone which gave foretaste
of the accomplishment of his full maturity.
Curiously this is most marked in two or three
full-lengths. The earliest of these was the
famous " Dr Nathaniel Spens " in the possession
of the Royal Company of Archers, by which
body it was commissioned in 1791. In it close
realisation of detail and restraint in handling
are very happily harmonised with breadth of
ensemble and effectiveness of design. Some
five years later this fine achievement was

64 RAEBURN

followed by the even more striking, if rather
less dignified, "Sir John Sinclair," a splendid
piece of virtuosity, which unites brilliant colour
and admirable tone to great dash and bravura
of brush-work.

During this period, and indeed throughout his
career, Raeburn usually placed his sitters in a
strong direct light, which, being thrown upon
the head and upper part of the figure (from a
high side-light) illumined the face broadly, and,
while emphasising the features with definite
though narrow shadows, made it dominate the
ensemble. Very often this concentration of
effect was associated with a forced and arbitrary
use of chiaroscuro. In many of his pictures one
finds the lower portion of the figure, including
the hands, low in tone through the artist having
arranged a screen or blind to throw a shadow
over the parts he wished subordinated. This
device appears in full-lengths as well as in busts
and threequarter-lengths, and while, no doubt,
helping to the desired end, is now and then a
disturbing influence from the fact that it is
difficult to account for the result from purely
normal causes. With Rembrandt, the greatest

RAEBURN 65

master of concentrated pictorial effect, the
transitions from the fully illumined passages to
the surrounding transparent darks are so gradual
and so subtle that one scarcely notices that the
effect has been arranged the concentration is
an integral part of the imaginative apprehension
of the subject. It is otherwise with Raeburn, in
his earlier work at least. Later he attained
much the same results by less arbitrary and
apparent means, by swathing the hands and
arms the high tone of which he evidently found
disconcerting and conflicting with the heads in
drapery, by placing them where they tell as little
as possible, and by modifications in handling. His
management of accessories was also determined
by desire for concentration. Although, as is
obvious from his increasing use of it, preferring
a simple background from which the figure
has atmospheric detachment, he frequently
used the scenic setting which Reynolds and
Gainsborough had made the vogue. His idea,
however, was that a landscape background
should be exceedingly unassertive " nothing
more than the shadow of a landscape; effect
is all that is wanted" and, always executing

66 RAEBURN

them himself, his are invariably subordinate
to the figure. But the essential quality of his
vision went best with plain backgrounds. That
he did not wholly abandon the decorative con-
vention which he heired, and often employed to
excellent purpose, was due in large measure to
caution. "He came," says W. E. Henley, "at
the break between new and old when the old
was not yet discredited, and the new was still
inoffensive; and with that exquisite good sense
which marks the artist, he identified himself with
that which was known, and not with that which,
though big with many kinds of possibilities,
was as yet in perfect touch with nothing actively
alive." Yet, had he had the full courage of his
convictions, his work would have been an even
more outstanding landmark in the history of
painting than it is. Still to ask from Raeburn
what one does not get from Velasquez, many of
whose portraits have a conventional setting, is
to be more exacting than critical, and, as has
been indicated, simplicity of design and aerial
relief became increasingly evident in Raeburn's
work, and that in spite of the protests of some
of his admirers.

RAEBURN 67

While Raeburn had been working towards a
fuller and more subtle statement of likeness,
modelling, and arrangement, it is possible that
removal to his new studio accelerated develop-
ment in that direction. The painting-room
had been designed by himself for his own
special purposes, and no doubt suggested new
possibilities. In any case, the portraits painted
after 1795 reveal a definite increase in the
qualities mentioned. But before considering the
characteristics of his later style, it might be well
to tell what is known of his habits of work and
technical procedure. Cunningham's summary of
these applies partly to the George Street and
partly to the York Place period, but for practical
purposes they may be regarded as one, for, while
Raeburn's art may be divided into periods, each
was but a stage in a gradual and consistent
evolution. "The motions of the artist were as
regular as those of a clock. He rose at seven
during summer, took breakfast about eight
with his wife and children, walked into George
Street, and was ready for a sitter by nine ; and
of sitters he generally had, for many years, not
fewer than three or four a day. To these he gave

68 RAEBURN

an hour and a half each. He seldom kept a
sitter more than two hours, unless the person
happened and that was often the case to be
gifted with more than common talents. He then
felt himself happy, and never failed to detain the
party till the arrival of a new sitter intimated
that he must be gone. For a head size he
generally required four or five sittings : and he
preferred painting the head and hands to any
other part of the body; assigning as a reason
that they required less consideration. A fold of
drapery, or the natural ease which the casting
of a mantle over the shoulder demanded,
occasioned him more perplexing study than a
head full of thought and imagination. Such was
the intuition with which he penetrated at once
to the mind, that the first sitting rarely came to
a close without his having seized strongly on the
character and disposition of the individual. He
never drew in his heads, or indeed any part of
the body, with chalk a system pursued success-
fully by Lawrence but began with the brush at
once. The forehead, chin, nose, and mouth,
were his first touches. He always painted
standing, and never used a stick for resting his

PLATE VIII.-MRS SCOTT MONCRIEFF.
(National Gallery of Scotland.)

None of Raeburn's portraits of ladies is quite so famous as this.
Although in indifferent condition owing to bitumen having been used,
it is singularly charming in colour, design, and sentiment, and is one
of the chief treasures of the gallery, in which it has hung since 1854,
when Mr R. Scott Moncrieff, Welwood of Pitliver, bequeathed it to
the Royal Scottish Academy. (See page 79.)

RAEBURN 71

hand on ; for such was his accuracy of eye, and
steadiness of nerve, that he could introduce the
most delicate touches, or the almost mechanical
regularity of line, without aid, or other con-
trivance than fair off-hand dexterity. He
remained in his painting-room till a little after
five o'clock, when he walked home, and dined at
six. . . . From one who knew him in his youth-
ful days, and sat to him when he rose in fame, I
have this description of his way of going to
work. "He spoke a few words to me in his
usual brief and kindly way evidently to put me
into an agreeable mood ; and then having placed
me in a chair on a platform at the end of his
painting-room, in the posture required, set up
his easel beside me with the canvas ready to
receive the colour. When he saw all was right,
he took his palette and his brush, retreated back
step by step, with his face towards me, till he
was nigh the other end of the room; he stood
and studied for a minute more, then came up to
the canvas, and, without looking at me, wrought
upon it with colour for some time. Having done
this, he retreated in the same manner, studied
my looks at that distance for about another

72 RAEBURN

minute, then came hastily up to the canvas and
painted for a few minutes more." These details
may be supplemented by the list of colours used
by him, which Alexander Fraser, R.S.A., gave
in The Portfolio. "His palette was a simple
one ; his colours were vermilion, raw sienna (but
sometimes yellow ochre instead), Prussian blue,
burnt sienna, ivory black, crimson lake, white,
of course, and the medium he used was
1 gumption,' a composition of sugar of lead,
mastic varnish, and linseed oil. The colours
were ground by a servant in his own house and
put into small pots ready for use." When one
adds that his studio had a very high side-light,
and that he painted on half-primed canvas with
a definitely marked twill, all that is known of his
practice has been noted.

As already suggested, Raeburn's style was
tending towards greater completeness of expres-
sion and more naturalness of arrangement before
he removed to York Place in 1795, but, while
his normal advance was in that direction, it
was so gradual that it is only by looking at
a number^ of pictures painted, say, five or ten
years later, and comparing them with their

RAEBURN 73

predecessors that one notices that the advance
was definite and not casual. Occasionally, as
in the "Professor Robison," there is a very
emphatic restatement of a somewhat earlier
method ; but, as the " Lord Braxfield " of about
1790 is a premonition of a much later manner,
this exceptional treatment seems to have been
inspired by the character of the sitter having
suggested its special suitability. But comparing
the splendid group, "Reginald Macdonald of
Clanranald and his two younger brothers"
(about 1800), or the "Mrs Cruikshank of
Langley Park" (about 1805), with typical
examples painted between 1787 and 1795, one
finds the later pictures marked not only by
increased power of drawing and more masterly
brush-work but by a finer rendering of form, by
greater roundness of modelling, and by a more
expressive use of colour and chiaroscuro.

Considerable ingenuity has been expended
in trying to prove that Raeburn's subsequent
development was due in some way or other to
the influence of Hoppner and Lawrence. Con-
sideration of his situation and of his work itself,
however, scarcely bears this out. His ignorance

74 RAEBURN

of what was being done by London artists, and
of how his own pictures compared with theirs,
is very clearly evident from the following letter
written to Wilkie :

Edinburgh,
12th September 1819.

Mr dear Sir, I let you to wit that I am still here, and long
much to hear from you, both as to how you are and what you
are doing. I would not wish to impose any hardship upon
you, but it would give me great pleasure if you would take
the trouble to write me at least once a year, if not oftener,
and give me a little information of what is going on among
the artists, for I do assure you I have as little communication
with any of them, and know almost as little about them, as
if I were living at the Cape of Good Hope.

I send up generally a picture or two to the Exhibition,
which serve merely as an advertisement that I am still in the
land of the living, but in other respects it does me no good,
for I get no notice from any one, nor have I the least con-
ception how they look beside others. I know not in what
London papers any critiques of that kind are made, and our
Edinburgh ones (at least those that I see) take no notice of
these matters. At any rate I would prefer a candid observa-
tion or two from an artist like you, conveying not only your
own opinion but perhaps that of others, before any of them.

Are the Portrait-Painters as well employed as ever? Sir
Thomas Lawrence, they tell me, has refused to commence
any more pictures till he gets done with those that are on

RAEBURN 75

hand, and that he has raised his prices to some enormous
sum. Is that true, and will you do me the favour to tell me
what his prices really are, and what Sir W. Beechy, Mr
Philips, and Mr Owen have for their pictures ? It will be
a particular favour if you will take the trouble to ascertain
these for me precisely, for I am raising my prices too, and
it would be a guide to me not that I intend to raise mine
so high as your famous London artists.

Moreover he is said to have visited London
only three times : in 1785, when he spent several
weeks while on his way to Italy ; in 1810, when
he contemplated settling there; and in 1815,
after he was elected an Academician. It is
of course only with the later visits that we have
to do in this connection. By that time Hoppner
was dead, and Lawrence's claim to be painter
par excellence to the fashionable world was
undisputed. No doubt the Scottish painter
would be attracted by the technical accomplish-
ment of Lawrence's work; but he was between
fifty and sixty years of age and little likely to
be influenced by an art, which, for all its
brilliance, was meretricious in many respects.
Yet it is possible that the adulation lavished
by society upon his contemporary's style may
have induced him to consider if something of

76 RAEBURN

the elegance for which it was esteemed so
highly could not be added with advantage to
his own. On the other hand, Scottish society
was gradually undergoing evolution, and,
while a greater infusion of fashion amongst its
members would in itself tend to stimulate the
favourite painter of the day in the same direction,
increase in wealth would bring a greater number
of younger sitters to his studio. Probably a
combination of these represents the influences
which affected Raeburn. In any case, his later
portraits, especially of women, possess qualities
of charm and beauty which, while never merely
pretty or meretricious, connect them in some
measure with the more modish and less sincere
and virile work of Lawrence. But otherwise
and, unlike his southern contemporaries, he
never sacrificed character to elegance or
subordinated individuality to type the evolution
of his style continued on purely personal lines.
The pictures painted between 1810 and his
death, while still at the height of his powers,
are essentially one with those of the preceding
decade. There is in them a more delicate
sense of beauty than before, and his portraits

RAEBURN 77

of ladies are marked by a quickened perception
of feminine grace and charm; but these are
results of the natural development of his nature
and of his personal powers of expression rather
than of any radical alteration in his standpoint.

As regards the work of the last fifteen years
and more, it is less increased grasp of character,
for that had always been a leading trait, than
growth in the expressive power and complete-
ness of his technique that is the dominating
factor. And here the prevailing qualities are
but the issue of previous experience. His
modelling ceases to be marked by the rough-
hewn and over simplified planes which had
distinguished his incisive square-touch at its
strongest and becomes fused and suave. As Sir
Walter Armstrong put it, "He began with the
facets and ended with the completest modelling
ever reached by any English painter." Now
his colour not only loses the inclination to
slatiness and monotony, which were evident
before 1795, and sometimes even later, but, the
half-tones being more delicately graded, the
transitions, though still lacking the subtleties
of the real colourist, are blended and the

78 RAEBURN

general tone enriched and harmonised. And
his use of chiaroscuro becomes infinitely more
delicate both in its play upon the face and in
the broad disposition, which now attains finer
and more convincing concentration in virtue of
more skillful subordination through handling,
as well as through more pictorial management
of his old arrangement of lighting. Moreover
the scenic setting, if retained in many full-
lengths, is to a great extent abandoned for a
simple background lighted from the same
source as the sitter, and against which face and
figure come in truer atmospheric envelope and
relief. With these alterations, which were not
perhaps invariably all gain, his later work now
and then lacking the delightfully clear and
incisive brushing of the preceding period, were
also associated a fuller and fatter body of paint
which, while never loaded, gives richness of
effect, and a sonorousness of tone which his
earlier pictures rarely possess.

A sympathetic and human perception of
character was the basis of his relationship to
his sitters, each of whom is individualised in a
rarely convincing way, and to me at least the

RAEBURN 79

view of life expressed in his later pictures
seems more genial and comprehending than
that which dominates his earlier work. Com-
paratively this is perhaps especially evident in
his rendering of pretty women. "Mrs Scott
Moncrieff," "Miss de Vismes," "Miss Janet
Suttie," and "Mrs Irvine Boswell," to name no
more, are all beauties; but each differs from
the others, and is marked by personal traits
to an extent unusual in his earlier practice.
Still his grasp of character is more obviously
seen in his portraitures of older women and of
men, and his masterpieces are to be found
amongst his pictures of this kind rather than
amongst his "beauty" pieces, seductive though
the best of these are. When one thinks of his
finest and most personal achievements, one
recalls such things as "Lord Newton," "Sir
William Forbes," and "James Wardrop of
Torbanehill," or "Mrs Cruikshank," and "Mrs
James Campbell."

Born a painter of character, Raeburn was
at his best where character, intellect, and
shrewdness were most marked. Yet axiomatic
though it may sound, this implies great gifts.

8o RAEBURN

To seize the obvious points of likeness, and
make a portrait more living than life itself is
comparatively easy; but to grasp the essential
elements of likeness and character, and, while
vitalising these pictorially and decoratively, to
preserve the normal tone of life is difficult indeed.
Of this, the highest triumph of the portrait-
painter's art as such, Raeburn was a master.

The plates are printed by BEMROSK V SONS, LTD., Derby and London
The text at the BALLANTVNK PRESS, Edinburgh

ND Caw, James L , 1864-

497 Raeburn.

R24C3 T. C. and E. C

Jack ( [1909?])

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